Will Baum, LCSW

A study reported at PsychCentral used CBT and bibliotherapy (“read this”) to help reduce binge eating with good results.

[Participants were] asked to read the book Overcoming Binge Eating by Dr. Christopher Fairburn…The book details scientific information about binge eating and then outlines a six-step self-help program using self-monitoring, self-control and problem-solving strategies.

Participants in the study attended eight therapy sessions over the course of 12 weeks in which counselors explained the rationale for cognitive behavioral therapy and helped participants apply the strategies in the book.

Curious about Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and its approach to anxiety?  Take a look at this 18-page info and worksheet pack posted by the University of Huddersfield.  Lays it out clearly and simply–might be helpful.  Here’s the complete “Anxiety Self-Help Pack.” (via Therapy Worksheets)

A long review/think piece in the New Yorker about therapy and psychiatry, including the view from Gary Greenberg’s book, Manufacturing Depression: The Secret History of a Modern Disease:

Greenberg basically regards the pathologizing of melancholy and despair, and the invention of pills designed to relieve people of those feelings, as a vast capitalist conspiracy to paste a big smiley face over a world that we have good reason to feel sick about. The aim of the conspiracy is to convince us that it’s all in our heads, or, specifically, in our brains—that our unhappiness is a chemical problem, not an existential one…

More here.

From the L.A. Times:

A mounting pile of research shows that cognitive behavioral therapy can effectively treat anxiety disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, bulimia and substance abuse problems. The method has performed as well as antidepressant medication in treating depression in recent studies. What’s more, patients receiving cognitive behavioral therapy have shown less likelihood of relapse than their medicated peers because the therapy teaches them how to handle their disorder.

But U.S. therapists have been reluctant to embrace the technique…